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Instagram Purchased by Facebook

On Monday, Facebook announced that it had purchased popular (and FREE) smart phone and tablet camera app, Instagram. Reportedly, it was purchased for a staggering 1 billion US dollars. If you’re not familiar with Instagram, it’s an app for smartphones and tablets that allows users to take photos, add quirky filters to them, and then share the photo with friends across social media platforms. Additionally, the app allows its users to follow each other, and display their photos on a reverse chronological Timeline. Originally, Instagram was only available to iPhone and iPad users, but was made available on the Android Market earlier this month. With over 30 million current users, Instagram was the most popular app of 2011.

Users of Instagram were shocked and a bit worried about Facebook acquiring it. Looking at past acquisitions, Facebook has a reputation of buying up smaller companies, raiding them for their talent, and “shuttering their services”. Facebook claims that this deal is a bit different, and that they will allow Instagram to continue to develop somewhat independently.

The acquisition of Instagram is a wise move on Facebook’s part. Not only is it one of the most popular and fastest growing apps on the market, more integration with Facebook will allow this social media giant to stay fresh and new, something other social media sites (i.e: Myspace, Friendster) failed to do. Although Mark Zuckerberg said that similar acquisitions like this are highly unlikely, acquiring popular apps like Instagram may be the secret of longevity for Facebook.